


I'll Keep My Lanterns Lit

by thirdsleeper



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: #savegansey2016, Angst, First Kiss, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Putting the abuse tag just in case because it's Adam and I mention it once, and don't worry no one dies for real, or at least it was going to be fluff and then it turned into ANGST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 15:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5830351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirdsleeper/pseuds/thirdsleeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, Four Times They Let Each Other Sleep And One Time Adam Broke the Rule</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Keep My Lanterns Lit

**Author's Note:**

> For excelsors and anorable on tumblr, because their lovely pynch stories inspired me to try writing some of my own~~  
> For reference, the headings of Adam's scenes are from Lanterns Lit and Ronan's are from I Am the Others, both incredible Son Lux songs I had on repeat while working on each section. Enjoy!

* * *

_1 I’ll break from the weight of my mind, but your ghost I will gladly bear_

  
When Adam Parrish pushed open the door to Monmouth Manufacturing after a late shift at the garage, he wasn’t surprised to see Gansey awake, spread out on the floor with the rest of his paper Henrietta. He wasn’t surprised when Gansey didn’t hear him come in, too absorbed in the delicate house between his fingers. Adam wasn’t surprised when he crouched down next to him to see that the house in question was a perfect replica 300 Fox Way, from the porch railings to the chimney mysteriously without a fireplace (at least not one Adam had found in the house yet), from the little blue windows to the boy trying to find a way to hold on to it all.  
  
“Didn’t know you were coming over tonight,” Gansey finally said, still cradling the four paper walls as if they were a substitute for the girl who lived within them.  
  
Adam didn’t answer, or, rather, Adam didn’t have an answer. After his double shift he’d been so exhausted and so unable to sleep his feet had led him to the only place he knew he could find company that wouldn’t expect him to talk. Gansey knew this. He also knew he was not that kind of company.  
  
“Go check on Ronan, would you? I-” he hesitated, cool exterior betrayed by fatigue and the dark shadows pressing against the tall windows. “It’s been a bit quiet in there,” Gansey finished, jerking his chin in the direction of Ronan’s room, a normally casual statement laced with the memory they both shared of a bloody night like this, when they found out what happens when the dissonant symphony that is Ronan Lynch gets too quiet.  
  
It wasn’t that Gansey was scared to face him. It was that he was scared to face him for a second time. He could handle Ronan’s night terrors, his love of driving fast and swearing and bad ideas, his walls and barbed wire and bad dreams, but he couldn’t stare down his true nature without flinching.  
  
Adam could. Most of the time, Adam could.  
  
And that was why Adam set his bag down at the foot of Gansey’s bed and crossed the floor to Ronan’s door, stopping only to bump fists with Noah as he stuck his head out the kitchen/bathroom.  
  
“There’s leftover Chinese. I didn’t finish my orange chicken,” Noah remarked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.  
  
At one point, Adam would’ve bristled at the offer, but now he just rolled his eyes. “You don’t even eat.”  
  
Noah’s grin was unsettling in the half-light. “Touché, man.”  
  
Adam turned and knocked on the door in front of him as a formality, then twisted the old knob and shoved the door open. Shoved, because he knew if Ronan was in the room he wouldn’t deign to respond to any civilized form of knocking, and also because he knew the floor was half covered in dreams Ronan hadn’t bothered to pick up. All over the room sat gifts from Cabeswater, a few things Ronan had taken, and some objects that had just appeared. After he’d realized stealing things meant draining the ley line, Ronan resorted to asking politely, or as politely as a snake can. Sometimes this meant Cabeswater sent him back with beautiful things he wasn’t sure were his creation or the forest’s, and sometimes he woke with the floor covered in aggressively strange smelling moss.  
  
Adam slipped in and squinted into the gloom, searching for night terrors or wasps or a Greywaren. He found only one of the three, curled up on his side in the center of the black bedspread, almost invisible in the dark. Harsh EDM pulsed from the headphones bent half up to Ronan’s ear and half down his neck, on the verge of breaking, just like anything that dared to get too close to him. Adam stepped gingerly over what looked like a middle school science fair solar system complete with glowing planets circled by tiny floating asteroid belts and gaseous rings, except there were a few too many planets and none of them looked like Earth. The fist-sized sun in the center cast just enough light for him to make his way over to the bed.  
  
“Lynch, Noah said there’s leftover Chinese if you want any.”  
  
The figure on the bed didn’t stir. Adam refused to worry yet. “Lynch.”  
  
Again, he didn’t move. Adam swallowed. “Stop dicking around, Lynch. Hey. Ronan.”  
  
At that the dreamer finally drew breath, an inhale short and somehow intimate in the quiet as he rolled back and threw an arm to rest above his head, revealing closed eyes and parted lips and sleep. Ronan was sleeping. In Monmouth Manufacturing.  
  
Adam may have been slightly surprised.  
  
Ronan never slept at Monmouth anymore, not if Gansey was there. He’d skip class and sleep during the day when Gansey was at school, or in his car, or at the Barns, or with increasing frequency on the floor next to Adam’s own metal bed frame, but never at Monmouth. Too easy to dream in the comfort of your own bed, in your own home. To easy to bring a nightmare back.  
  
Adam allowed himself three (okay, maybe five) seconds to mindlessly follow the curve from Ronan’s hip up his ribs to his shoulder, then his elbow then his hand, noting the Epipen rolling from the tips of his fingers just in time to lean forward and catch it from hitting the floor. Ronan gasped, once, and Adam froze, crouched by the side of the bed, level with the other boy’s face. In the glow of the dreamed sun he didn’t look peaceful. He looked unguarded, maybe, younger, but it was easy to see Cabeswater humming under his skin, keeping the Greywaren in his mind awake. With a jolt, Adam wondered how awful it must be to have a part of yourself always awake, always aware, never at rest. At least when Adam lay down after a long day he knew that for the next few hours he would be blissfully unconscious. Ronan didn’t have that outlet. Some of his other methods of stress management suddenly made a bit more sense.  
  
Adam rose and slid the Epipen in his pocket. Gingerly, he reached across the sheets and pulled Ronan’s headphones from their precarious position, setting them on the bedside table and reaching to unwind the cord from around his limp arm. As Adam’s fingers brushed warm skin, the voice in the back of his head whispered about how much easier life would be if the only time he had to deal with Ronan Lynch was when he wasn’t conscious. Another voice whispered that the problem was how much he wanted to deal with Ronan Lynch all the time.  
Ignoring them both, Adam pulled at the cord until it unearthed the phone attached. He paused the music and set it next to the headphones. With one final cursory glance to make sure there was nothing else present to strangle Ronan except for himself, he pulled the bedspread up and over the sleeping boy then grabbed the headphones and phone, trying not to stumble as he picked his way over to the unused desk chair opposite the bed.  
  
There was no way in hell Adam was going to make it through the day tomorrow, but there was no way in hell Adam was about to let his friend inadvertently kill one of his only other friends by manifesting a swarm of wasps, because unfortunately, Adam didn’t have that many friends to spare. So he settled in the chair and pulled on the headphones, still a little warm from Ronan’s ears, he imagined, and turned on the most obnoxious music he could find in the library. Adam fiddled with the Epipen in his pocket and wondered what normal high schoolers did at night.  
  
He wasn’t surprised when Ronan rolled to face him, almost as if the sleeper was staring with his eyes closed. He wasn’t surprised when the voices in his head went quiet and he stopped thinking about ley lines and rent and calculus exams and work. He wasn’t surprised when he let himself trace the contour of Ronan’s jaw with his eyes, and then the hollow of his eyelid, the curve of his ear.  
  
He was surprised, however, when he woke up in Ronan’s bed covered in white dandelion fluff.

* * *

_2 You have the arms to sound the alarm, but you don’t_

Ronan prided himself on knowing the difference between awake and asleep, but when he woke up that line blurred so fast he almost passed out. Adam was curled up in his desk chair, wearing Ronan’s own headphones and wrapped in a blanket from Ronan’s bed, an Epipen resting on the desk beside him. One of his bare feet poked out from under the blanket and Ronan almost passed out a second time. It was too much, too much, in the way Adam was always too much and he couldn’t get enough. Ronan blinked, hard, and when the illusion of Adam-in-his-room and Adam-covered-in-things-that-weren’t-exactly-Ronan-but-might-as-well-be remained he let out a shuddering breath and fought to contain the rush of energy he always got when Adam did something heinously attractive and equally infuriating. But here he couldn’t escape it by driving away or punching a wall or setting something on fire. He gnawed on his bracelets and tried counting to ten in Latin, then English, then Gaelic, but every time his mind rebounded to the boy sleeping in his chair.  
  
_Unus Adam_  
 _Duo tired blue eyes_  
 _Tria times Adam’s been in his dreams this week_  
 _Quattuor lanky limbs, that maddening paradox of reedy strength_  
 _Quinque fingers on his hands fucking Christ on a Christmas card his hands_  
  
Abandoning all attempts at numbered distractions, Ronan forced himself to stop thinking and start using his brain. He didn’t remember falling asleep, and a sick seed of guilt began to bloom inside him. Gansey was probably in Monmouth all night. Ronan could’ve killed him, in any of the hundreds of minutes between when he lost track of the music coming from his headphones and started hearing the music of Cabeswater. Gansey could be dead right now for all he knows, and he was too busy thinking about Adam Parrish’s hands to even check.  
But Adam Parrish and his lovely hands were asleep, he realized, and an unused Epipen sat on his desk. If Ronan had dreamed even a single wasp, Adam would’ve woken up, because he was an unfortunately light sleeper even on the best days. Adam knew this, and he still chose to sit and try to stay awake as Ronan got to run around in a magic forest and live his dreams. The guilt bloomed further as Ronan figured out the rest of Adam’s day after a nearly sleepless night, with school then a shift at the trailer factory and another at the garage, then homework and hopefully a real dinner. This, and the idea of Adam maybe missing something and blaming himself (because he would, without hesitation), even though wasps were so small and could be so quiet-  
  
But he hadn’t woken up, and Ronan couldn’t remember dreaming about bees of any kind. He remembered quite vividly laying under a tree with vines wrapped around his arms and legs and neck, struggling to breathe until soft hands unwound each branch, running gently along Ronan’s skin and filling his head with the scent of motor oil and grass. He remembered turning as the hands disappeared and seeing Adam staring at him, the same Adam-shaped dream thing that he’d been seeing for weeks. “There’s leftover Chinese, Ronan,” Dream Adam had told him, and Ronan forgot about the Chinese as soon as his name rolled of Adam’s tongue in the accent of Henrietta, of home and hot summers and Glendower. But as much as Ronan hated to admit it, this version of Adam was not the Adam he knew in real life. This Adam didn’t have bags under his eyes, or chapped hands, or shoulders that curled in on themselves. This Adam’s smile went all the way to his ears, every time, and he looked at Ronan like he didn’t know what fear was. This was the Adam he wished Adam could someday be. Adam plus happiness. Adam plus Ronan, he dreamt.  
  
Ronan would’ve groaned, thinking of this dream again the next morning, and maybe kicked something, but the real Adam was still asleep, so he didn’t. The clock on the wall read 4:45am and was also dripping water onto the carpet, meaning that soon it would be time for school, and it was raining outside. Adam used to hate the rain because of holes in the roof at St. Agnes meant being kept up all night by water dripping into a bucket. He hated weather of all sorts, really, until Ronan tripped over the drip bucket as he was trying to get into Adam’s apartment and quietly funded a new roof for the church the next day. Now Adam loved the rain, and the way it made his apartment feel less like something small and closer to something cozy, and Ronan got a secret thrill out of knowing Adam liked something he also liked, and it was all because of Ronan.  
  
He hauled himself to his feet, grimacing when Adam shifted at the noise. The headphones were slipping off his ears, and Ronan could hear the Murder Squash song playing at full volume through them. It was too damn early for that song, even for a Lynch, so he pulled the headphones off and placed them on the desk. Adam looked so wedged into the chair that he almost laughed, but the feeling caught in his chest when Adam’s head lolled back, exposing the long line of his throat. For the third time that morning, Ronan considered passing out.  
He instead opted to pick Adam up, working one arm under his knees and another around his back, the blanket making everything so much more difficult. With a grunt he lugged him over to the bed and set Adam down, then pulled up the duvet to cover him as best he could. Adam stretched out in the bed like a spring, legs extending and torso rolling as lean arms wedged under the pillow. Ronan sat down heavily in the desk chair, the rightness of it all hitting him the gut harder than Declan ever could. He looked at Adam so much his eyes hurt, looked at Adam lying in his bed with a sleepy half-smile on his lips and bedhead, and Ronan wanted to set a fire bright enough to match the implosion of joy in his chest.  
  
This time Ronan really did pass out, but more from fatigue than anything else. But in his dream this time, Adam looked exactly the same as he did in life, in sleep. Cabeswater sang. Ronan reached out a finger and ghosted it along Adam’s Parrish’s closed eyelid. His eyelashes felt exactly like dandelion fluff.

* * *

_3 With all your grief in my arms, I’ll labor by singing light_

  
It had been three weeks since Adam woke up alone in Ronan’s bed, and since that night they came to a quiet agreement that Ronan would sleep exclusively at Adam’s. It was too dangerous at Monmouth, and although Adam had taken to using some of Ronan’s elaborate cusses to complain about the moss on the floor and useless dream junk showing up in the morning, he knew it was better than risking Gansey’s life every time Ronan wanted to catch some shut-eye. They’d argued briefly about what would happen to Adam if Ronan brought back something worse than bees, and god knows it would happen at some point. But as soon as the fight started they both knew they’d deal with whatever nightmares arose in order to make sure Gansey didn’t have to. He shouldn’t be subjected to any horrors Ronan accidentally creates, and Ronan knew this most of all.  
  
They didn’t discuss the beautiful things in his dreams, though, not the dandelions or baby ravens or delicate solar systems. Each dreamt treasure felt like a secret neither of them could quite name, so they don’t. Ronan silently commandeered a shelf to house the best of the objects, and Adam pretended he didn’t marvel over them when Ronan wasn’t there. When he gets caught with an perfect replica of Earth in his hands, wet ocean, soft clouds and all, Ronan just rolls his eyes. “Gansey asked me to dream him the world.”  
  
In this way, Adam becomes privy to a Ronan he wasn’t sure existed. This Ronan hates sleeping with socks on but has to have a blanket long enough to cover his feet “or else they’re cold as your fucking heart, Parrish, so give me the bigger blanket, asshole.” This Ronan sleeps best when Adam falls asleep first, lying in bed just above his camp mattress on the floor. (Adam figured this out because on those nights, when he can’t quite remember the last inane question Lynch asks him before they drift into silence, Ronan must sleep so well he doesn’t dream anything, and Cabeswater only covers Ronan in moss when he’s slacking off.) This Ronan thinks it’s okay to use Adam’s toothpaste in morning because he translates Adam’s Latin homework on the sly.  
  
This Ronan wakes Adam up by pulling up the plastic blind as high as it can go to let in the blinding sun and then leaving without a word.  
Adam isn’t as big a fan of that Ronan.  
  
But the rest of him, the wildly human way he throws himself down on the bedroll he found in Monmouth’s basement and the cheerful “Fuck you, Parrish” he tosses back at Adam’s daily “G‘night, Lynch”- that’s what keeps Adam awake in the dark tonight. His shallow breaths were matched by deeper ones from the floor. Leaning to the side, he chanced a peek over the edge of the mattress and made sure Ronan was asleep. He had gotten used to this angle, seeing him from above, and it made him feel steady. In control. From above he could tell when Ronan was dreaming, if it was good or bad, or when he was just sleeping. Sometimes Cabeswater whispered in Adam’s deaf ear, telling him what the Greywaren was chasing. Sometimes not.  
  
Tonight, Ronan was definitely dreaming. His eyes twitched under their lids, and his jaw clenched every so often. Adam couldn’t figure out what type of dream this was yet. He wouldn’t tell anyone, but his favorite part of the day was casually asking Ronan during History what he’d dreamt, and finding out if his guess was right. The good dreams meant staying up to watch Ronan smile and gasp in wonder, maybe even hearing his quiet laugh of delight. The bad dreams meant sitting bolt upright to watch him writhe on the floor, kicking at the blanket and breathing hard as silent tears rolled. Adam could never wake him up from those dreams. He could only watch and wait with balled fists for Ronan and whatever else was in his head to wake up and come racing back into the real world.  
  
So tonight he looked over the edge of the bed, trying to work out what kind of dream Ronan was having, and why he liked the sight of him on his floor so much even if it meant a higher probability of having to fight off a living monster later, and how many nights he’d get to spend like this until they graduated and Adam had to go find a job to pay for a real apartment to sleep in. Undeniably, he knew he’d let Ronan dream on his floor for the rest of their lives, even with the gross moss and useless additions to the decor of the tiny space. Adam looked up to survey the dream shelf and wondered at the music box that only played “Never Gonna Give You Up,” the tiny terrarium of plants made entirely of glass, the stockpile of Epipens and hand lotion and even a stack of unbelievably large bills tucked between the pages of a worn bible Adam had a sneaking suspicion was Ronan’s. The fight they’d had when he handed it to Adam was astronomical, but Ronan convinced him with a blunt reminder of Greenmantle’s web that someday he may need to run, and he couldn’t do that in a car as shitty as the Hondayota. Adam countered that they’d just take the BMW, but Ronan reminded him that the last Greywaren was not in any state to drive after Greenmantle was done. Adam paled, took the bible, and put it on his shelf. Ronan slept in the BMW that night.  
  
When Adam looked back down, there was a faint static hum in his deaf ear. Ronan was now tossing fitfully from left to right, and the blanket was quickly being kicked down. Adam sat up immediately, watching as Ronan’s lips moved in a language he didn’t know.  
  
“Ronan-” he began, but the Greywaren’s face contorted in pain and he began to groan, low in the back of his throat, the veins in his neck and running down his arms tensed.  
  
“Hey, hey, Ronan, wake up-” Adam knew it was futile but he tried every time. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and bent to jostle Ronan’s shoulder. At the contact Ronan screamed, a primal sound that cut straight through Adam and had him flinging his hand back to instinctively cover his face. Ronan flopped onto his other side, his back to Adam, and coiled into a ball, arms drawing up and around his shaved skull. Both boys breathed heavily for a time, Ronan much worse for wear as his gasps turned to sobs that Adam could almost feel shaking his bed frame.  
  
Tentatively, Adam reached out his hand again and gently pressed his fingers to Ronan’s spine, barely touching the center of his back. Neither of them moved, but Adam could feel Ronan’s labored breathing, so he began rubbing a tiny circle around a single knob of his spine. When that didn’t seem to bother him, Adam widened the circle to fit between his shoulder blades, then rested his whole palm on Ronan’s back and smoothed a trail up and down, from the back of his curled neck to his lower back. After a while he switched back to lazy circles because his arm ached and his own back was cramping from hunching down from the bed to the floor. Ronan’s breaths became slower and slower as Adam dragged his hand across the thin shirt, and gradually Ronan’s limbs loosened until he was resting on his stomach. Adam mirrored him, laying back down on the bed and letting his arm dangle over to keep drawing circles on Ronan’s back. He let his hand drift up to trace the cataclysmic swoop from Ronan’s crown back down his neck and relished the smooth skin that lay between his buzzed hair and the topmost hooks of his tattoo. Adam relished this feeling until his chapped hand stopped moving and he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

* * *

_4 We have the air to shout but we don’t, we don’t dare breathe out_

  
Cabeswater wasn’t angry, but all of its inhabitants were, excluding one. Ronan had given up staying calm what felt like hours ago, and now he was just trying to be the only thing that made it out of this dream alive. Night terrors howled behind him as he pushed through branches and bushes, feeling his arms getting sliced to ribbons by thorns. “Any help here?” he hollered to the trees, but all he could hear were the vicious cries of the beasts not far behind. His path veered left into a grove as the forest gave way to snow white birch trees and he paused, panting. Silently, Adam slipped out from behind a tree he definitely could not have fit behind. Ronan’s stomach plunged. “Run, Adam, they’re coming, you have to run-”  
  
But slow as molasses, Adam approached Ronan and gave him a once over, lifting his chin with two slender fingers to stare straight into Ronan’s fear. “Why are you still scared of those things? They’re yours.”  
  
“Happy fucking birthday to me, then,” Ronan spat back, whipping around as he heard a thick snap from behind him. Adam was unconcerned with the night terror stepping into the clearing.  
  
“You could turn them to ash if you wanted.” Adam dropped his hand and shoved it in his pocket.  
  
“I’m not some fucking magician, Parrish.” Two more night terrors had joined the first, then three, then they were surrounded by a wall of black wings and leathery skin and fangs.  
  
Adam’s face broke into the soft grin he reserved for Gansey’s moments of childlike ecstasy and Ronan’s general stupidity. “Yeah, I guess that’s my job.”  
  
“Damn fucking right, now please, you have to get out of here, run-” Ronan began, but the first of the night terrors had lunged forward and cut open his leg from knee to ankle. He tried not to scream because screaming always made it worse. “Adam, please-” Another night terror, another wound, this time a stab to the abdomen. Ronan groaned and doubled over.  
  
“Ronan,” Adam whispered, like he had all the time in the world to spend on the two syllables of his name. One of the beasts lashed out and cut a thin line down Adam’s cheek, but he didn’t move. Another drew a matching cut on his other cheek, and Ronan made a break for him but was cut off by bite to his leg. He sank to the ground and watched as Adam stepped to him, pressed close by the writhing mass of black. “Ronan, I might be the Magician, but you’re the king of dreams. Quit being such a dumbass.” With that he pressed a hand to Ronan’s shoulder, and Ronan felt the power of the ley line turn to fire in his veins, burning him from the inside out until he screamed and the world erupted in flames.  
  
When his eyes opened again, the world was orange and red. Night terror carcasses littered the grove, smoldering, and the burning birch trees lit the world in a sick glow. Ronan looked down and saw Adam’s body in his arms. The Magician’s skin was hot, too hot, and with a final special grin up at Ronan, Adam turned to ash in his arms and crumbled to nothing. Ronan stared at the ash on his hands, and the fire he created, and collapsed into a ball on the ground.  
  
Cabeswater heard his cries and it began to rain.  
  
Ronan sobbed and shivered with his arms wrapped around himself, eyes closed as tight as they would go. This was only a dream. This was only a dream, a stupid fucking endless dream. Time passed. Ronan didn’t know how long. Long enough for the rain on his skin to dry, and grass to grow over the dead bodies that always seemed to surround him, and Adam was still gone. Adam was still gone. He was the King of Dreams and he couldn’t make Adam come back. He felt fingers press into his back but didn’t move, what was the point? He prayed it was a night terror returning to finish the job. The fingers circled and became a hand, trailing along Ronan’s tired spine. He knew exactly whose hand this was, even before the scent of motor oil reached his nose, and his weak gasps subsided slowly as Adam rubbed out the hurt, until Ronan unwound enough to lie flat on his stomach in the warm grass. The circles didn’t cease as the sun filtered down through the leaves, as birds began to quietly whistle once again.  
  
At one point Ronan thought about looking over to make sure Adam was real, but Adam’s hand slid over his buzzed head and back down to stop at the nape of his neck and Ronan almost asphyxiated. When his gentle fingers slowed to nothing, then stopped, Ronan lay still a moment, then turned his head and cracked an eye open. His blood ran cold. He was lying on the floor of Parrish’s apartment, and the boy with a lease of that apartment currently had a hand curled possessively around the back of Ronan’s neck. A very warm, very real hand.  
“Fucking shit a dick up my anus,” Ronan breathed, and this breath was enough to wake Lightweight Sleeper Champion Adam Parrish, because of course it was. The Lightweight Sleeper Champion looked down at him in the haze of sleep with absolute certainty for about three seconds before it gave way to shock. Ronan launched himself to his feet, shivers prickling on his neck, and threw himself out the door before Adam could even sit up.  
  
Behind the wheel of the BMW, Ronan went through the motions of driving recklessly while his mind skittered for purchase. What had been real? What was a dream? Why did Adam make him feel like everything was a dream? And why the flying monkey fuck hadn’t he been able to tell the difference?  
  
It was still dark out, and Henrietta’s street lamps did little to fight that. All it was too much. He couldn’t make himself move through the night any longer, so he pulled into the abandoned lot off Lafayette Avenue, a measly six blocks from St. Agnes, and climbed into the backseat, wishing his dreams came easier in real life than in they did in sleep.

* * *

_5 I’ll keep my lanterns lit_

  
Adam pedalled like his life depended on it. When Ronan had flown down the stairs in his hurry to escape whatever was between them, had always been between them, Adam was too stunned to follow for a moment. But once it hit, he sprang to his feet and followed faster than a sinner fleeing holy ground. He reached the bottom of the steps and considered his options: in the parking lot sat the Hondayota, with just enough gas to make it to school and work and back, and his old bike chained to a lamppost. With a pang of frustration, Adam grabbed the bike and raced down the street. He wasn’t sure where he was going, as Ronan’s tires had sped away before he could see the direction, but he had an idea.  
  
After six frantic blocks, Adam flew over the curb and into the abandoned lot off Lafayette where Ronan usually parked the BMW for naps before he started sleeping on Adam’s floor and before Adam had realized the inches between the floor and the bed were too far, that any inches between him and Ronan would always be too far. The black car was parked under a streetlamp, a shadow in the dark, and Adam threw down his bike and sprinted to it. He could see Ronan stretched out in the backseat, the top of his head a smudge against the window. Adam knew exactly how the prickling hair on the top of his head felt, and exactly how cramped Ronan must be trying to fit his whole frame onto the seat, and exactly how it would feel when he threw open the door to the car and climbed in over the front seat to land on Ronan’s chest. He didn’t know exactly how it would feel when he pressed their lips together, but he knew that no dream thing on the shelf could compare ever again to the new miracle of Ronan’s lower lip caught between his own, to the shift from bewildered surprise to instantaneous understanding. Ronan’s body awoke below him, an arm wrapping around Adam’s back and another hand snaking up to pull his face closer, until there were no inches between them and Ronan had felt those dandelion eyelashes with his lips and caught Adam’s secret grin in his own.


End file.
